Abstract
Conventional methods of coagulation and flocculation are used to treat semiconductor industry wastewater, but they often fail to recover valuable silica particles and result in resource wastage and environmental risks. Despite the potential of membrane filtration for silica recovery, limited research is available on scaling up the process beyond laboratory scale. Therefore, this study aims to develop and evaluate the feasibility of pilot-scale ceramic membrane plate filtration system for treatment of diluted back grinding wastewater (DBGW) from the semiconductor industry. Specific objectives include assessing permeate quality in terms of rejection and benchmarking it to established standards, identifying fouling mechanisms, characterising sludge constituents and conducting life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts of the ceramic membrane plate filtration system compared with conventional treatment. The pilot membrane plate filtration system demonstrated significant reductions of 85.71 % in chemical oxygen demand, 67.31 % in total suspended solid, 75 % in nitrate–nitrogen (NO3-N), 33.33 % in ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N), 74.07 % in colour and 98.37 % in turbidity. Effective mitigation of irreversible fouling during DBGW filtration was achieved using 0.1 M NaOCl, resulting in a flux recovery ratio of 95.35 %. The retained silica on the membrane exhibited a purity of 64 wt%, as confirmed by EDX analysis. The treated wastewater met various regulatory standards including Malaysia Industrial Effluent Discharge (Standard A and Standard B), restricted USEPA standard, NWQS Class IIA, IIB, III, IV and V, and Singapore’s greywater standards. The fouling mechanism of silica on the ceramic membrane was well represented by the standard blocking model with an R2 value of 0.92. Furthermore, LCA confirmed that the utilisation of the ceramic membrane plate filtration system exhibited fewer environmental impacts than conventional coagulation–flocculation methods. This study represents a significant breakthrough in wastewater treatment in the semiconductor industry in terms of concurrent recovery and reuse of silica to address environmental and resource sustainability concerns.
Published Version
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